Dresses and suits
by Silberwolf97
Summary: As Bucky one day decides to clean Steve's room, he discovers that his flatmate wasn't who he thought it was... Set Pre-War


**Dresses and Suits**

Bucky was going nuts. He had sprained his right wrist a week ago and was bound to stay home ever since. Steve was out most of the time, working extra hard to fill the gap Bucky's injury left in their budget.

Day one was okay. Bucky got to read a comic he had bought a few weeks ago and never had time up until now. He relaxed a bit – a day of sometime wasn't wrong.

Day two was a bit harder. He read the comic again but afterwards, there wasn't much to do. So, he decided to do something quite unusual for him. Bucky had cleaned the entire living room by the time Steve came home.

From day three onward it went downhill. Bucky grew extremely antsy and nothing calmed him down. By the end of week one, he had cleaned the kitchen three, the living room five times and the bathroom twice.

And he was meant to stay home for yet another week!

With Steve out of the house most of the time and every room cleaned at least twice, there was nothing much Bucky could do. He had read all of his comics at least ten times already and grumpily sat down on the couch.

Wait...

He hadn't cleaned _every_ room. Steve's bedroom was still untouched. Well, his half of their shared bedroom but whatever. But it was a complete mess, since Steve never really found time to clean it over the last week.

Bucky nearly jumped from his spot on the couch when the idea occurred to him. Steve would surely be really happy if his side of the bedroom was clean for once. After all, the blonde loved cleanliness above all else!

His excitement made Bucky almost dance to the bedroom. Oh, how he would love to see that glimmer of joy in Steve's eyes again! He could see it in his mind and a wide grin split his face. He always loved to make his best friend smile or laugh.

Bucky had long since given up on finding out why exactly he felt the way he did. Truth be told, he was afraid. Deep inside his heart, he knew what he felt and this was damned illness and sin by doctors and clerics alike.

Bucky snapped from his thoughts when he reached the bedroom door and opened it. Steve's side really was a mess and a huge pile of clothes covered half the bedroom floor. Bucky started lightly, sorting through the clothes. He put the sketchbooks he found on the bed, he'd sort them away later.

He felt a bit creepy about sniffing Steve's clothes and tried easing his mind by telling himself it was to determine whether they needed washing or not.

An hour later, he had sorted through the clothes and folded the clean ones in a neat pile. There was another pile of clothes still on the floor, but those where the ones that needed to be cleaned anyway. Bucky decided it was time for a break and slumped down on Steve's bed.

He took one of the sketchbooks and flipped it open. He always loved Steve's drawings and those were no exception. The first one was the sunset above Brooklyn as seen from their living room window. Even though that it was only black charcoal on yellowing paper, Bucky felt that it was even more vivid that the real thing.

He flipped through the pages and marveled at the different sceneries Steve had sketched over time. A vast variety unfolded before his eyes, from the park right outside their door to the view from the Ferris wheel on Coney Island.

Black against the yellowy paper and still, the sketches were so lively and filled with emotion. Bucky flipped another page and his hand froze mid-air.

It was a sketch of Sarah Rogers, smiling with joy and liveliness in her features. He knew, this was how Steve wanted to remember his mother, wanted her to be remembered. Not the pale, sickly and thin woman she had been shortly before her death.

Bucky had to blink away a tear. Sarah had been a second mother to him and his sister Rebecca as well as a good friend to his parents and her death affected the Barnes' family as well. But he still couldn't help the small tear as he saw Sarah in a beautiful dress, grinning widely from the page up to him. Still, he smiled.

Bucky flipped the page nonetheless – only to freeze again with his breath caught in his lungs.

It was a sketch of him. His own face looked up at him, smiling brightly with small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from laughing. He took a shaky breath and exhaled just as shaky.

It wasn't that he didn't know Steve would sketch him every now and then. Christ, he had even posed once or twice, so he was aware that he had been caught on paper a few times. No, he felt all weird because of the emotions edged into the soft curve of his mouth, the small wrinkles in his face and the lines of his eyes.

Longing. Sadness. Jealousy. And an almost unbearable amount of affection.

'Is...is that how Steve sees me?', he thought to himself and tried working his throat around the knot that formed in it. He almost didn't turn the page, afraid of what he might find. Almost. He flipped the page after what seemed like an eternity and found his suspicions confirmed.

Again, it was a sketch of him. This time, it showed the upper part of his body down to his hips. The details of his shirtless, sweat-covered chest were almost painfully accurate. Steve even managed the small scar just above his left hipbone he had gotten the day he pulled the punk out of a fight the first time of many.

Bucky remembered the day this picture was from very clearly. The midsummer heat had gotten to him then and he was running around shirtless the entire day. Steve had captured the way Bucky's hair had been a mess then because he had run his hands through it dozens of times. Even the way, pearls of sweat ran down his body only to vanish in the seam of his pants and traced every single muscle along their way down.

It was like looking at a photograph and the pose it was drawn in didn't make it any better. Sketch-Bucky had one hand on his hip, which was coaxed to one side and the other hand in his hair. It looked like he posed for one of those mags nobody ever talked about but every grown-ass had at home somewhere.

Yet again, the emotions edged into every line of the sketch took Bucky's breath away. Slowly, he flipped through the pages and every new sketch he uncovered made him wonder just what Steve was thinking. If anyone ever found this, they would both be send away to heal what was wrong with them.

Bucky was almost at the end of the sketchbook as one of the pages fell out from between the others. He assumed it to be another sketch, carefully picked it up and turned it over.

It wasn't a drawing.

Bucky's entire world crumbled as he read the black letters.

Birth certificate

Stella Grace Rogers

July 4. 1918

Brooklyn

this couldn't be real, it had to be a joke. Bucky was almost tempted to laugh it off.

If this single damn piece of paper didn't explain so much.

Why Steve – no, Stella – never wanted to be seen when changing clothes.

Why she never took of her shirt, no matter how hot or humid the summer air was.

Why she appeared even more pale on some days. Bucky did have a basic understanding of how a woman's body worked due to his sister Becca.

A sound between a nervous laugh and a choked sob escaped his lips. How was he supposed to act around his flatmate now? Pretend like nothing happened and he didn't know shit? Coax her into telling him of her own accord? Or maybe even talk to her about it?

His mind betrayed him and images of her drawings of him rolled past his inner eye. The emotions in each and every line of his face and body, the story those sketches told. Stella apparently was female, so his feelings weren't an illness but completely normal. Maybe... just maybe, he should act on them?

Suddenly, Bucky heard the front door open, close and keys being put away. "'m home!", Stella shouted from the hallway. Now that he knew, he heard the effort she made to sound deeper and more masculine. Her footsteps came closer and Bucky could make out the feminine lightness in them. Stella's fingers appeared in the door-frame to push open the door – slender, female hands smeared with black from the charcoal she used to draw.

Bucky made a split-second decision as she walked into the room and asked: "Whatya doin' Buck-" Stella stopped mid-sentence and her eyes widened. She had seen the paper in his hand and stopped dead in her tracks.

Bucky saw everything, from the soft, feminine curve of her chin to her plumb and rosy lips. He could even make out the small bumps where her shirt stretched over her chest and the gently curve of her hips.

A minute passed like this, Bucky staring at Stella, Stella staring at the paper in Bucky's hand. His heartbeat picked up and his breath came quicker but alas, none of them said anything. Or moved a single muscle, for that matter.

Bucky wasn't even sure what he should say. Yeah, he made the decision to talk to her about it, maybe find out why she hid it from him. But he never thought about _how_ exactly he was going to do that. He racked his brain for something, _anything_ he could say but that was taken out of his hands pretty quickly.

"I'll be outta here by tomorrow morning"

Bucky blinked. Once. Twice. And then, the meaning of her words sunk in and he opened his mouth to oppose, to tell her it was alright, that she didn't need to run from him. But instead of words, a choked sound came out of his mouth.

Stella teared up and started shivering. Her body went rigid for a second, then she turned and darted for the door. Which moved Bucky into action, who had been frozen to the spot before. His body went into autopilot and he surged forward, grabbing Stella's wrist and pulling at it.

She spun around from the force and fell heavily against his chest. Bucky wasn't prepared to hold that weight and even though Stella weighed less than a feather (okay, not really but it felt like that to him) they stumbled back until Bucky's knees hit the bed-frame and they fell onto the mattress.

Stella was full-on crying now and tried her best to get away from him, choking out "Let me go!"'s in the process. Bucky felt something break inside him and he had to blink back tears of his own. "Don't go...", he croaked out, his voice raw and raspy.

Stella stopped her attempts and her crying left a wet spot on Bucky's shirt. He didn't care. She wasn't trying to get away from him anymore and that was all that mattered to him now. Silent tears streamed down his own face and he was unable to stop them.

Bucky didn't count the time until they both had stopped crying. He only cared for Stella and that she was close to him. After some time, she rose and wiped away the remnants of her tears. As she saw his face, she wiped his cheeks too. "Guess, I should explain", she whispered.

Bucky kept his arms where they were and after a few moments, Stella settled against his chest again. "Mom told me. To hide my gender, I mean. She said that I would have a forced marriage else. Because nobody would want to marry me with all my illnesses, the color-blindness and my bad hearing. I know that she didn't want to be mean, she tried to protect me from a cruel fate. So, I did as I was told and pretended to be a guy", she said and sighed.

Bucky was speechless. He knew, Sarah only wanted the best for her child. But he knew Stella since he was six. So, Sarah told her five-year-old daughter to hide her true self to prevent loosing her to someone who didn't love her.

He pulled her closer and as he spoke, his voice felt like it hadn't been used in ages: "Why didn't you tell me?" Stella snorted a joyless laugh. "How was I supposed to do that, hu? You've known me for so long, I was surprised I could keep it from you until now. Also, you've always been on dates with all those beautiful dames, how am I supposed to compete with that?", she cut herself off after that and he felt her shuffling.

"Forget the last part", Stella added. Her voice was small and Bucky heard the embarrassment in it. He grinned. "Now, how am I supposed to do that, hu? You basically just told me you love me and I'm meant to forget that?", he knew he was being mean. But this had always been their game.

Stella winced horrified and shifted again. Bucky felt his cheeks heat up but the grin never faltered as he said: "The woman I love and admire tells me she loves me too and I am supposed to forget that? I am appalled."

The reaction was immediate and very, very satisfying. Stella whipped her head up to look at Bucky with wide eyes. His grin only grew bigger and even the heat that spread down his neck didn't change it. This grin had gotten him in and out of trouble simultaneously multiple times.

"You... mean it?", the blonde asked after a few minutes of silence. Bucky pulled a face and replied: "Did I ever lie to you, sweetheart?" Stella shook her head no and the red that previously stained her cheeks climbed down to her chest until she was practically glowing.

But she was still frozen in one place, almost as if his confession froze time. So, he decided to take things into his own hands and moved his left up to her head. While he softly ruffled her hair, he felt something underneath it.

Stella twitched and unfroze. Her hand moved up and she pulled a ribbon out her hair. Which fell down her back in a golden waterfall, now that it was no longer tied up. "I couldn't bring it over my heart to cut it...", she admitted and looked away.

But Bucky had other plans. He lifted her chin to face him and looked her in the eyes. Then, he sighed and sat up. Stella still tight in his arm resulted in her kneeling in front of him while he propped up his legs to either side of her.

Bucky took Stella's chin again and looked into those blue orbs once more. He slowly moved in and with every inch closer, his heartbeat picked up. He never had problems with other dames, so why now?

 _Because you love this one and only this_ his mind told him and in the same second, he calmed. Bucky let his eyes drift shut and brushed Stella's lips with his own. It wasn't much, he didn't want to overdo it after all. But as soon as he wanted to pull back, he felt her hands on the collar of his shirt tugging him back.

He knew, Stella never kissed anybody. _And she won't kiss anyone else ever again_ he growled in his mind. They parted and Bucky rested his forehead against Stella's. She giggled a little bit and without the attempt to make her voice sound deeper, it sounded so much more like her.

He chuckled himself and Stella whispered: "I was dumb... had I known what I've been missing out, I would've told ya earlier." Bucky frowned playfully and asked: "So, you gonna go runnin round and kiss every guy ya come across?"

She chuckled and put her left hand on his cheek. "No. I will run round, yeah. But the only guy I wanna kiss is you", she whispered before pecking his lips. Bucky looked her into the eyes and smiled. Not his smug grin nor the i-haven't-done-anything-wrong grin.

He smiled with all the affection and admiration he held for her. His heart was doing joy jumps in his chest and he felt like he could fly, that's how happy he was.

"Buck?"

"Hm?"

A slight pause. Then:

"I love you."

"I love you too, babygirl. Ain't ever lettin' ya go again."

"That's good. Never planned on goin' anywhere anyway."


End file.
